Kisume (キスメ) is a rather shy Tsurube-otoshi who usually spends her time in buckets. She is often seen in dark places such as caves or wells. As a midboss with no dialogue and a sparse official profile, little is known about her.

General Information

Ability

Ability to drop will-o'-the-wisps

It is to literally drop will-o'-the-wisps from the objective that is on top of her head. It probably comes from her species as tsurubebi (釣瓶火, lit. "well-bucket fire"), thought to be the same as tsurube-otoshi. Her spell cards have many that drop danmaku vertically, which would be the specialty of her species.

Character Design

Origin

Tsurube otoshi (lit. bucket dropper) are a type of youkai believed to have originated in the Chuubu region of Japan. They usually live atop trees, and when humans come close to the tree a bucket or a severed head drops down and eats them. They are also sometimes depicted as flaming spirits. There is also a traditional Japanese proverb somewhat related to her species: "The autumn sun descends like a bucket falling into a well" (秋の陽は釣瓶落とし,Aki no Hi wa Tsurube Otoshi). It is a proverb used to indicate how the days in Autumn get shorter.

Name

Her full name is Kisume (キスメ). According to ZUN, her name is written in katakana to give it an old feel, and it's not written in kanji because "that would make her seem too strong".[1]

Design

Kisume has a pale skin with dark teal hair tied up in pigtails by white hair beads. The bucket she sits in is a cherry brown with black hoops near the top and bottom. She wears a white robe with an obi.

Literature

Back in 1984, Aya Shameimaru reports that during Gensokyo's winter, children were finding skeletal remains of a human while playing around a dried-up well, to which it ended up that the well was declared to be off-limits. Apparently, a tsurube-otoshiyoukai (presumably Kisume) came out of well saying "So is THIS the body you dropped down here?" and threw the bones at them. There were no-one missing, so for who the bones belong to is a mystery.

The bones disappeared while no-one was looking during preparations to bury it in Muenzuka. This rolled onto a case whether there was any sort of incident or not, along with the identity of the previous owner of the bones. Yukari Yakumo though it was by the youkai from the Underworld and that they wanted to scare the humans since their powers come from the negative energy of humans, but it may've been a simple misunderstanding. There was a non-intervention agreement pact made between the underworld youkai and the surface, so the situation could become complicated. Tengu hope to avoid trouble with the underground.

The incident was settled as silver birch branches have been mistaken for bones, to which no ominous occurrences had happened at the Human Village. At a later date, it was confirmed that the dried-up well was filled in with dirt; who did this is unknown.

A fearsome youkai who drops straight down onto you from above when you're walking the streets late at night.
She usually lives in caves or wells. She's a bashful youkai who likes confined spaces, so she usually spends her time inside buckets.